Monday, 9 June 2014

Rik Mayall has died

I didn't enjoy his work in the main part of his career - but near the beginning of his career, sometime around 1981-2, in the Jesmond Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne - he and Adrian Edmondson - as The Dangerous Brothers - made me laugh harder and longer than ever in my life before or since, in a sketch about trying to tell the joke of what's green and hairy and goes up and down - a gooseberry in a lift.

Raw energy and pure genius.

Alas, that didn't last long - it never does; and neither did Rik Mayall.

I never met him, but sat in front of him at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in an extremely-bad one-woman-show by Emma Thompson; and it was obvious that he was an obnoxious show-off 'in real life'.

Still, he was indescribably brilliant for a couple of years in the early 1980s.

Dangerous indeed.

**

Note added: When he first emerged, Rik Mayall was not only as funny as anybody ever (at least, for people with my taste in humour - which was admittedly, a minority) but he was as completely-original a comic I have ever seen. At the time it looked like something completely new. The nearest prior equivalent I have come across was the inconsequential humour of Chick Murray (1991-1985) the Glasgow comedian - which was a bit like Mayall's 'Kevin Turvey' character. But Murray's wit led to smiles and chuckles, while Mayall's humour - at its peak - led to helpless gasping for breath and near death paroxysms.